Animator’s July, August, September in an Egg Shell

Ferdinand Engländer

September 30, 2012

It has been quite a while since I wrote a “monthly” recap about what was going on in the animation world (too much work and then too much vacation). So finally to update you (and me) let’s see what was going on the last three months. Enjoy your scrambled eggs of information and inspiration. If I missed something feel free to share it with us in the comments.

:: News

Digital Domain is facing bancruptcy
VFX company Digital Domain, who is involved in the productions of many Hollywood blockbusters is facing financial troubles. They owe $51 million to an investment group including $16 million in interest and penalties. CEO John Textor whos free student labor policy was causing a wave of protests some month ago called this amount of money small compared to the company’s value. DD closed down their location in Florida and halt production of its first animated feature The Legend of Tembo leaving 300 workers (some of them just got hired a few days ago and just moved there) without any prospects. Later CEO John Textor resigned and in September the company announced bancruptcy.

Fox distributes Dreamwork’s feature films for the next 5 years
Fox signed a deal with Dreamworks to distribute all of their feature films from 2013 to the end of 2017. Rise of The Guardians will be the last film distributed by Paramount. The production of the films will still be completely independent from Fox. They already own Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age, Rio). Having Dreamworks as a new partner strengthens the position of Fox in the animation industry.

Production on a Henry Selick’s Stop Motion Feature stopped
In July Disney announced to halt a Henry Selick (Coraline, The Nightmare before Christmas) stop-motion feauture film project. The fact that they already started animating before they had all the actors casted and recorded or even a movie title indicates that there were quite some troubles during production.

Animation projects are successful on kickstarter
The project Anomalisa made $406,237 on kickstarter (a record for the animation catagory). Furthemore kickstarter supporters recently funded John K.’s “Cans without Lables” and also made “Animusic 3″ finally come true and more… Seems like kickstarter is a great opportunity for animation. Read more about it on cartoonbrew.

:: Trailers

New Wreck-it-Ralph Trailer… looks really good… spoilers a lot of jokes though

Paranorman came out. Really great animation – stop motion at it’s best. The story is charming and entertaining; epecially if you are into humorous horror and movies with an ironic undertone. The storytelling with stereotypes works wonderfully in this masterpiece. Go watch it, if you still have the chance!

Since I already mentioned Animusic above. Do you know their hit “Pipe dream”? A great reminder that there is something like scripted animation that can be used for something else than VFX explosions or abstract particles…
For some reason Intel decided to actually build it… doesn’t look as pretty, but works in real life